By Jim Lawson, with Stephen R. Bissette, Peter Laird & various (Dover Comics & Graphic Novels)
ISBN: 978-0-486-80356-2
It’s a rare hominid that hates dinosaurs. Sure, the occasional chimpanzee might prefer a nice kitten or peanut, but most of us soft, hairy two-leggers can’t get enough of our antediluvian predecessors. Apart from the cool way they look and the marvellous variety they came in, it’s pretty clear they concentrated on eating their surroundings and/or each other and never once tried organised sports, or to appropriate more deckchairs than they could use, or wreck the planet…
Seriously though, there’s an irresistible, nigh-visceral appeal to all manner of saurians; small or super-sized. Most of us variously and haphazardly evolved hairless apes seem obsessively drawn to all forms of education and entertainment featuring monster lizards from our primordial past. That’s especially true of comics.
Most nations and many languages have filled countless pages with illustrated stories featuring cretaceous cameos and lizardly line-ups, but America has proudly gone one stage further than most by evolving a true sub-genre. As eruditely and loving explained by Stephen R. Bissette in his scholarly overview and Introduction ‘The Paleo Path: Paleo and the History of Dinosaur Comics’, the terrifying thunder lizards have been visitors and antagonists in literature and the arts for decades but it was comics – specifically a minor back-up feature in Turok, Son of Stone #8 (August 1957, by Paul S. Newman & Rex Maxon) – which finally gave them a voice of their own.
What’s a Dinosaur Comic? One set in the creatures’ own times and scenarios, with no human intrusion or overblown authorial invention. They are scientifically credible tales about animals living and dying on their own terms and in their own context: no cavemen, aliens, time machines or human heroes. All Then, All Lizard, All the Time…
There have been precious few – and Bissette lists them all, including his own wonderful Tyrant – but for us devotees, paramount amongst them is the far-too occasional Paleo: Tales of the Late Cretaceous by Jim Lawson.
Since 2001 the exceptionally gifted, prolific and apparently tireless Lawson has relaxed from his day jobs (most impressive of which are the thousands of pages of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles he has written and drawn for more than two decades) by crafting a string of 8 black-&white comics detailing the fictionalised natural history and dramas of the big beasts.
Now Dover has republished Lawson’s 2003 graphic novel compilation, with the added attraction of two more unpublished issues: three all-new stories produced in collaboration with Bissette, Peter Laird and other equally dedicated devotees.
In case the name still seems familiar, Lawson’s other interests include motorcycles – one day I’ll review his outrageous debut series Bade Bike and Orson – and fantastic fantasy. His other cartoon forays include Rat King, Planet Racers (with TMNT co-originator Laird) and in 2013 he began new project Dragonfly…
This mammoth monochrome collection begins with that aforementioned Introduction before quickly thundering on to the meat we all crave, opening with Book One (inked and lettered by Laird) which focuses attention on a key moment in the life of a Triceratops seventy million years ago…
These “Tales from the Late Cretaceous†are all delivered with the earnest veracity and unsentimental authenticity of a show on Animal Planet, or perhaps the better Disney wildlife films of the 1960s and 1970s, and the spectacular, eye-popping narrative takes the form of informed observation as a young, leathery, three-horned cow interacts with or avoids Quetzalcoatalus, egg-stealing proto-rodents and voracious Daspletosaurs, getting into a fix which nearly ends her young life. Nearly…
Lawson inked his own pencils on Book Two where an alpha male Dromeosaur deals with a pushy young male in the female-heavy pack. Status quo re-established, the hunters collaboratively take down a massive Tsintaosaurus but when an apex predator Albertosaur claims the kill, the pack’s hierarchy again becomes an issue of survival…
This issue was supplemented with ‘Gratitude… A Paleo Short Story’ wherein the most experienced female of the pack examines her precarious place in the world…
Book Three examines a strange case of maternal transference as a baby Stegoceras loses one mother and believes a roosting Quetzalcoatalus might be a likely substitute whilst Book Four reviews ‘A Busy Day in the life of a Plotosaurus’ with the colossal sea lizard coming in-shore to scavenge from Aublysodons and later making the kill of a lifetime in deep water after boldly attacking a much larger Thallassomedon Plesiosaur…
It’s a time of snow and deadly cold in Book Five as an aging Albertosaurus takes a bad wound from the Styracosaur he planned on eating. As the world slowly turns white, the hunter finds himself regarded as prey…
There’s a shift in focus and look at the true top killers in Book Six as a herd of feeding Corythosaurs idly watch a dragonfly pass. The insect which is the epoch’s most efficient hunter then makes a mistake for the ages when it lands on the wrong tree at the right moment…
Lawson is at his dramatic best depicting a night hunt in ‘A Paleo Short Story’: a stark, wordless, dramatically chiaroscuric duel to the death in the dark…
Book Seven offers layers of passionate empathy as a Tyrannosaurus Rex battles a host of lesser beasts taking advantage of her seeming defeat by an unconquerable enemy – viscous mud flats – before Book Eight lingers lovingly on the lives of the era’s biggest beasts as a brace of Alamosaurs provide smaller herbivores such as Lambeosaurs and Edmontosaurs a safe, sheltering, mobile feeding environment. But what happens when one disappears and the other is no longer passive…?
The lengthy new material begins with ‘Easy’ (story by Bissette, art Lawson & lettered by Thomas Mauer) as a healthy young male meat-eater succumbs to the pressure of the breeding impulse, heedless of the deadly consequences, after which the same creative team craft ‘Floater’ with a baffled tyrannosaur unable to tear himself away from a tantalising carcass in the river. She’s long dead. She should just be food, but why is her belly still heaving and moving?
This catalogue of carnosaur carnage and herbivore history closes with ‘Loner’ – an all-Lawson affair – as an adolescent Tyrannosaur is driven away by his mother and sisters and learns the cost of being alone. Why then would such a solitary survivor after years alone adopt another rejected young male at he risk of his life?
This book superbly opens a window onto distant eons of saurian dominance and provides a profound panorama that focuses on a number of everyday experiences which simply have to be exactly how it was, way back then…
As in all these tales, the astoundingly rendered and realised scenery and environment are as much characters in the drama as any meat and muscle protagonists and all the other opportunistic scavengers and hangers-on that prowl the peripheries of the war, ever eager to take momentary advantage of every opportunity in a simple battle for survival…
Lawson’s love for his subject, sublime feel for spectacle and an unmatchable gift for pace coupled to a deft hand which imbues the vast range and cast with instantly recognisable individual looks and characters, always means the reader knows exactly who is doing what.
This is book no lover of lizards and comics fan should miss.
© 2003, 2016 Jim Lawson. All rights reserved.
Paleo: the Complete Collection is available in comic shops and online around the world now. It can be pre-ordered online for a February 26th release in the UK.